I’m immediately angry. It’s not a gentle movement on the meter from green to yellow to red. It’s calm to livid in one second flat. At first, I try to swallow my feelings so I don’t upset anyone, but then I hear Mabel’s voice in my head: Tell your sisters the truth.
“Maddie, I need you to stop saying things like that. It’s so frustrating to me.”
Madison’s head tips back a little, and her eyes widen. Everyone else seems too stunned to speak. That’s fine because I have more than enough to say right now. “And please, I’m begging you to stop calling me Angel Annie. I hate it. I’ve hated it forever. I know you don’t mean it as a bad thing—but it feels like one. It puts me in this suffocating little box that I can’t climb out of.”
“Annie…where is this coming from all of a sudden?” asks Emily, looking startled.
I sigh and then, yep, the tears finally catch up to my anger. “It’s coming from years and years of swallowed feelings that I was too afraid to voice. And that’s my fault. I haven’t been truthful with you guys at all—and now I feel like you don’t even know me.”
“That can’t be true,” Maddie says, shaking her head and trying to catch up.
“It is—and I’ll prove it. Will was actually acting as my dating coach because I did go out with Hot Bank Teller, and he bailed in the middle of the date because I was so boring.”
Emily gets angry creases between her eyes. “That son of—”
I hold up a hand in her direction. “But it’s not about him. What I realized is that I have been boring. I’ve been hiding so much of myself all this time to fit into the mold I accidentally made as a kid. I never really thought I was affected by the deaths of Mom and Dad like you guys were, but it turns out that my perfectionism has been one big coping mechanism. I never wanted to rock the boat or add more hurt or stress to anyone’s lives, so I became this always-sunny version of myself, which…is killing me.”
Tears start rolling down my cheeks now and instead of getting angry at me, Maddie tips forward and takes my hand. She doesn’t say anything, just squeezes in a go-ahead sort of way.
“Y’all, I hate the No Swear Notebook. I loathe that thing. But I keep it up for you guys because it seemed important to you.” I raise and lower my shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “I don’t even remember how it started! But truthfully, I could care less whether you guys curse or not. Oh! And yeah, it’s true—I don’t like casual sex. I’m an emotional person and I’ll need an emotional connection before I sleep with someone. And I really need for you guys to stop turning that into a punch line.”
“We didn’t make it a punch line! Or…not intentionally,” Emily says defensively.
“It always felt like one, though. Every time you guys call me sweet or refer to me as a cherub or someone who never makes mistakes—it feels like you’re saying it in a belittling way.”
“Okay—I do hear you, but roasting each other is what we do! It’s how we show our love.”
“And I understand that too. But you can’t only refer to those aspects of me in a joke. You need to spread the teasing around. Make fun of my stinky feet, or that I snore at night, or some other random shit. Don’t always go after my personality, because it starts to make it feel like a fault in me.”
Maddie looks at Emily. “Did she just say shit?”
“I think she did.”
I’m on a roll now, though. My adrenaline is pumping so hard I could walk outside and lift this house above my head. I could crack it down the middle with my bare hands. “And that’s not all!” I say like an overexuberant infomercial host.
I dart from the room and return, pushing my box of romance novels. “I’m a romance reader,” I say firmly, like this is the biggest reveal of all. “And sexy pirate romances are my favorite. I have fantasies of men in buckskin breeches wearing an earring and making love to me on the helm of a ship! But more important, I have fantasies of Will Griffin being the pirate to do it! And I’ve accidentally fallen in love with him and he’s leaving in three days and he’s never going to look back and now I’ve probably ruined my relationship with you guys too—and I’m so sorry.”
I collapse into a heap on the floor now. Putting my hands over my face and crying into my hands. I’ve never been this dramatic in my entire life, and I’m sure that tomorrow I’ll feel embarrassed about it. But for tonight, I just need to be authentically me. Messy embarrassing emotions and all. “I’m so sorry I haven’t been honest with you guys. I just didn’t know how. And now…”